In my home fantasy setting, there is no Arcane Background: Miracles per se, but religious characters can still manifest special abilities. I posted the rules at the link below; I'd love feedback on this. I'm especially torn about whether Dauntless/Unyielding should really be two separate edges or combined, and whether the "Notice" function of the skill should require an edge.

I feel the whole mechanic of the new skill as "wrong". It's almost useless 'cause probably you'll have in play few character with that skill higher than the linked characteristic, Spirit. So they'll end to keep rolling spirit when they need to resist fear etc.
Maybe you simply could trapping edges like Brave (+2 spirit to resist fear etc.) to "True Faith". So this "new" edge is useful to resist AND it opens the way to the other edges you created (which of course now should have True Faith as requirement).
Alternately, True Faith edge could give no resist bonuses, but simply give the Supernatural Notice thing and open the way to the other edges.

I like it for the most part, though I wonder if perhaps it's a bit too much of a "catch-all" skill. I could be wrong. I've never been partial to "Cleric Classes," with flashy powers that basically prove, "These gods are real, and I am clearly a disciple of this particular one, and in good standing." I like some ambiguity, and your setup allows skeptics to say, "Well, that could have happened anyway."

I think Dauntless and Unyielding could be combined, as long as you make sure there are not too many sources of Faith Bonuses. The character will have to buy his Faith up past Spirit anyway, and then an edge to make it useful.

Lord Lance wrote:I feel the whole mechanic of the new skill as "wrong". It's almost useless 'cause probably you'll have in play few character with that skill higher than the linked characteristic, Spirit. So they'll end to keep rolling spirit when they need to resist fear etc. Maybe you simply could trapping edges like Brave (+2 spirit to resist fear etc.) to "True Faith". So this "new" edge is useful to resist AND it opens the way to the other edges you created (which of course now should have True Faith as requirement).Alternately, True Faith edge could give no resist bonuses, but simply give the Supernatural Notice thing and open the way to the other edges.

Of course, my 2 cents.

Some good points. I find that my players do tend to put a few skills up really high and advance them one, maybe twice very early to get them at d12, and don't so much do that with attributes. That could be because we've only been playing SW for a few years and they are still getting the hang of the "right" way to make a character though.

I guess my primary thought in making it a skill was so that the abilities didn't rely on a diversity of traits, but I am thinking deeply about whether it should simply be a series of Edges.[/quote]

GranFalloon wrote:I like it for the most part, though I wonder if perhaps it's a bit too much of a "catch-all" skill. I could be wrong. I've never been partial to "Cleric Classes," with flashy powers that basically prove, "These gods are real, and I am clearly a disciple of this particular one, and in good standing." I like some ambiguity, and your setup allows skeptics to say, "Well, that could have happened anyway."

I think Dauntless and Unyielding could be combined, as long as you make sure there are not too many sources of Faith Bonuses. The character will have to buy his Faith up past Spirit anyway, and then an edge to make it useful.

I was concerned it may be to catch-all out of the gate as well. Do you think if the supernatural notice required an Edge to use that would mitigate it a bit?

CyricPL wrote:I'm especially torn about whether Dauntless/Unyielding should really be two separate edges or combined

Personally I would drop these two, seem to be pointless. In my groups, it would be unlikely that the Faith skill would be much higher than the character's Spirit. To get a d8 or d10 Faith, you most likely would have raised your Spirit close to that, otherwise you are killing a full advance on just raising one skill. Also, assume that he had a d6 Spirit and a d8 Faith, I would take Combat Reflexes and roll the lower on knowing I got a +2 to the roll.

CyricPL wrote:I'm especially torn about whether Dauntless/Unyielding should really be two separate edges or combined

Personally I would drop these two, seem to be pointless. In my groups, it would be unlikely that the Faith skill would be much higher than the character's Spirit. To get a d8 or d10 Faith, you most likely would have raised your Spirit close to that, otherwise you are killing a full advance on just raising one skill. Also, assume that he had a d6 Spirit and a d8 Faith, I would take Combat Reflexes and roll the lower on knowing I got a +2 to the roll.

Under the circumstances that I made it one edge with the D8 Faith requirement, given the other functions of the skill would it seem less pointless from your perspective? Under that circumstance the single edge would allow for all bonuses to the Spirit roll to overcome Shaken to also apply to the Faith, therefore the character would still be receiving the +2 bonus from Combat Reflexes when choosing to roll the higher die.

One of the reasons for making it a skill, from a general standpoint, ties pretty strongly into how I rewrote Holy Warrior. The problem that I was faced with was determining how to handle putting some control on Holy Warrior in a setting using the "No Power Points" rules. Making it an opposed Faith roll made sense to me, but I had already decided that Arcane Background: Miracles didn't really make sense in the setting since its spell list would consist of a grand total of 3 powers (Banish, Healing, and Greater Healing).

If I did rethink the entire "Faith" progression as a series of edges, does anyone have any suggestions how to handle Holy Warrior and how to handle the required rolls for Healing and Greater Healing?

CyricPL wrote:I'm especially torn about whether Dauntless/Unyielding should really be two separate edges or combined

Personally I would drop these two, seem to be pointless. In my groups, it would be unlikely that the Faith skill would be much higher than the character's Spirit. To get a d8 or d10 Faith, you most likely would have raised your Spirit close to that, otherwise you are killing a full advance on just raising one skill. Also, assume that he had a d6 Spirit and a d8 Faith, I would take Combat Reflexes and roll the lower on knowing I got a +2 to the roll.

Under the circumstances that I made it one edge with the D8 Faith requirement, given the other functions of the skill would it seem less pointless from your perspective? Under that circumstance the single edge would allow for all bonuses to the Spirit roll to overcome Shaken to also apply to the Faith, therefore the character would still be receiving the +2 bonus from Combat Reflexes when choosing to roll the higher die.

I probably wouldn't take it unless my Faith was two dice steps or higher most likely. I would rather spend the advance raising my Spirit, to make it easier to raise Faith later.

I don't see an issue with the Faith skill, it looks like it will work for what you set out to do. I just think getting an edge to use my Faith vs Spirit for shaken tests isn't worth it.

As a point of interest, some time back JackAce and I co-wrote an article on Religious Edges for the old Shark Bytes fanzine which may provide you with a viable alternative. I can't recall the specific issue, but it was one of the later ones. The back issues can be found at Savagepedia.

Sitting Duck wrote:As a point of interest, some time back JackAce and I co-wrote an article on Religious Edges for the old Shark Bytes fanzine which may provide you with a viable alternative. I can't recall the specific issue, but it was one of the later ones. The back issues can be found at Savagepedia.